Anthony, thanks for your prompt response. :) On 01/12/2006, at 5:48 PM, Anthony Bryan wrote:
This should be a good fit. The programs that support Metalink are already download managers, which are good for these unreliable connections, since they allow downloads to be paused and resumed.
Front ends for curl. ;)(I know they do more than that.) I've been wary of SpeedDownload for MacOSX, because it has been associated with some problems. I use Interarchy [1] for downloads. Will that work with Metalinks?
The vast majority of our users will be running Linux or Windows.
With the Metalinks, you have the alternate/extra links for higher reliability, and the automatic checksum verification. (Soon clients should also support checksums for portions of a file, so if there is an error in transmit, only the error portion will need to be re- downloaded - which could be very helpful in your case. Right now, if there is one error, the whole 100 MB or so file has to be re- downloaded).
That would be a BIG help. Many users who can't download a huge file like OOo the first day, will simply give up. We don't want that. (We're going to distribute OOo on CD as well.)
To use Metalink, all you need are a list of your mirrors. There's an article at http://www.osresources.com/3_18_en.html on "Making Metalinks." You will probably want to use the Metalink tools (http://metalinks.sourceforge.net/) to make yours.
Thanks, we'll look into this. :)
Since the .metalink files are XML text, you can just view them in a text editor to check them out.
I particularly like that. XML is very easy to understand and use.
The important parts are the <url>s and checksums. Then test them out with the clients (there are some on Mac, Unix, and Windows).
OK. We already have a download page for the testing builds [2], which will be simplified considerably if we can use Metalink.
Will the files you want to distribute be for multiple OSes? Multiple languages or just Vietnamese?
Mostly Vietnamese, for multiple OS: OpenOffice 2.1 (Vietnamese) OpenOffice 2.1 (English) OpenOffice 2.1 language pack (Vietnamese)the last two allow for users who run a multilingual setup, or already have a standard setup and want to add Vietnamese. The language pack is tiny by comparison with the full download.
Some sites will also host the French, Russian or Chinese builds, depending on local language use.
We will provide builds for all available OS, but the emphasis will be on Linux (4 flavours) and Windows, because that's what nearly all our users have.
If you need any help, please email me.
Thanks very much. I will if we get stuck. :)from Clytie (vi-VN, Vietnamese free-software translation team / nhóm Việt hóa phần mềm tự do)
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/vi-VN [1] http://www.interarchy.com/ [2] http://vi.openoffice.org/about-downloads.html
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